The First Wave Of Feminism In The United States

Feminism is described as organized activity on behalf of women's political, economic, and social equality, rights and interests (Beasley 1999). The first wave of feminism in the United States emerged between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century during the industrial period, primarily focusing on the rights for women to own and control property; access to equal education; and the right to vote in public elections (Janovicek 2015). The second wave of western feminism addressed sexual and reproductive oppressions as well as gender inequality in the workplace between 1960 and 1980, unlike the first wave which mainly focused on women’s suffrage and eliminating gender inequality (Scanlon 2009). However, each wave brought about the disregard

The continuous criticism of exclusion led to the creation of intersectionality: the idea that different social groups face interdependent systems of discrimination based on interconnected identities (Schuster 2016). These intersecting identities include gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, age, mental and physical disability, as well as mental and physical illness (Crenshaw 1991). Black feminism, Latina feminism, and Islamic feminism uses the concept of intersectionality as a platform to reflect the intersecting experiences and multi-layered realities that women within these specific groups are

Intersecting identities, including gender, sex, and religion, are interdependent causing interdependent systems of discrimination for different social groups (Schuster 2016). Black feminists, frustrated from experiencing sexism and racism from the black power movement, and the women’s rights movement, create a new form of social thought that which highlighted the interlocking systems of their unique oppressions (Lindsey 2014). In 1976 the court system failed to recognize sex-based and race-based discrimination as a single category of discrimination after five black women filed a lawsuit against the General Motors Corporation citing unfair termination (Crenshaw 2015). A framework which ignored the underlying intersection of their race and gender. Similarly, Latina feminism branched out of exclusion from the male dominated ethnic studies movements and the white dominated women’s movements; identifying the racial and gender specific intersections of Latina experience to challenge the interlocking structures of their oppressions (Ortega 2015). For example, in 1937 the U.S. permanently sterilized one-third of Puerto Rican women, using employer discrimination of mothers to attract unsuspecting women to participate in the procedure; disregarding the intersecting relationship